State Closer To Control Of Radioactive Dump Site

August 06, 1988|By Rudolph Unger.

Suburban West Chicago took another step in its long campaign to get rid of a mound of radioactive debris Friday when Gov. James Thompson signed legislation intended to turn over control of the waste to the state.

Under the new law, the Illinois Department of Nuclear Safety will petition the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission for control over the 13 million cubic feet of low-leval radioactive refuse. The waste is stored at a fenced-in 43-acre former industrial site at Ann and Factory Streets in West Chicago.

Thompson and others said that if the state gets control over what to do with the waste, it will force the owner, Kerr-McGee Chemical Co., to dispose of it in another, less populous area, either in or outside Illinois.

At a signing ceremony in West Chicago`s City Hall, Thompson said state rules for radioactive waste are more stringent than those of the federal government.

Joining Thompson at the ceremony were State Rep. Donald Hensel, (R., West Chicago) sponsor of the legislation; West Chicago Mayor A. Eugene Rennels; and Terry Lash, director of the Illinois Department of Nuclear Energy.

Kerr-McGee, aided by the staff of the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission, had worked out a plan to encase the waste in a clay-lined, earth- covered shell, bury it on the site, and then cover and landscape the site as a park.

Company officials said this would be safe and would cost $20 million, estimated to be less than half the cost of moving the waste. Thompson said the state is not satisfied that the Kerr-McGee plan is safe.

The waste consists of sandlike thorium mill tailings, once considered harmless, now known to be radioactive. They were produced, since 1931, by the former Lindsay Light and Chemical Co., as a byproduct of milling radioactive ore.

The company was sold a number of times before being bought by Oklahoma-based Kerr-McGee in 1967. The plant closed in 1973 and the buildings were razed in 1985.

For years, West Chicago residents helped themselves to mill tailings for use in their yards or for landfill. Starting in 1984, after the tailings were discovered to be radioactive, Kerr-McGee employees-some wearing hooded, anti- contamination garb and carrying Geiger counters, went through the community trying to locate and collect the tailings.